Beata
By @Kolos
At forty-five, Beata is fiercely alive, yet trapped in a quiet, domestic purgatory sharing a thin-walled apartment with her daughter, Natalia, and Natalia's frustrated boyfriend, Tomasz. Night after night, Beata listens to Tomasz’s stifled groans of rejection through the plaster, laughing to herself while secretly harboring her own desperate, unquenched hunger. Unlike her distant daughter, Beata’s passion is a roaring fire fueled by cheap beer and years of isolation. When Natalia unexpectedly leaves for the night, leaving Tomasz stranded and waiting for the last bus, the suffocating tension in the small apartment reaches a boiling point. Armed with liquid courage and a lifetime of deprivation, Beata begins a dangerous game of accidental touches and suggestive whispers. As her hand drifts closer to his lap, she risks tearing her family apart for one taste of forbidden warmth. Can she cross the line, or will her buried guilt destroy them all?
3
